My Systems Engineering mentor and professor, Bill Wood, shared a story with me today at lunch.
Passed along from his friend, a lawyer, he explained how employees consistently fall into three necessary categories. The Finders find customers and new business. The Minders care for the customers and keep the operations going. The Grinders are in the background doing all of the research, analysis, or productivity.
Who do you want to be?
Which role will make you partner first? second? (which role is most appreciated by your company?)
As he posed this story, I recognized the parallels to any industry. We also discussed which aspects of a job get us jazzed up. Dr. Wood pointed out his results of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator testing and further demonstrated how we can naturally be of one type, but train ourselves the attributes of other types in order to meet our goals.
2 comments:
I'd like to be a Minder, but I tend to get in the weeds and be a Grinder.
What are you? What do you want to be? How do you get there?
I'm a grinder, its so exhiliarating to work through the problem yourself. I'd really like to be a Minder and herd the cats to go in the same general direction to the same beat of the drum.
The people who seem to do really well are the people who move around a lot. Employers always believe the grass is greener on the other side and are always excited to give these transients a better offer. These Minders bounce around a lot and either 'get lucky' or move on having a new war story that makes them interesting in the next job.
I've got a couple of more adventures to go before I am an interesting Minder that can bring experience, organization, and vision to the team.
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